


All this Magic and I only See You

by Curlscat



Category: The Sisters Grimm - Michael Buckley
Genre: F/M, Full of cheese, It's For a Case, full of tropey tropes, it's fun i promise, that's the biggest one
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-22
Updated: 2017-08-22
Packaged: 2018-12-18 12:38:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,438
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11874627
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Curlscat/pseuds/Curlscat
Summary: Puck and Sabrina have to infiltrate the Fae court to rescue a changeling kid. It doesn't go smoothly. But then, when do things ever?





	All this Magic and I only See You

**Author's Note:**

  * For [coerulus](https://archiveofourown.org/users/coerulus/gifts).



> From a tumblr prompt here: http://curls-cat.tumblr.com/post/150474934387/pucksabrina-im-not-wearing-that

“I’m not wearing that,” Sabrina says, looking at the puffy yellow creation Snow is holding out to her.

“It’s the best option,” Snow insists. “I’ve looked. You’ll blend in best in this.”

The dress is made of tulle and chiffon in about fifteen shades of yellow and off-white, and it reminds Sabrina a lot of a dandelion. It’s gorgeous, but those puffy asymmetrical drapes are gonna get tangled up in her legs if she needs to run anywhere, and she’s not planning on a smooth evening. She’s hoping, yeah, sure, but with fairies involved, things rarely go smoothly.

“Snow. I’m supposed to be Puck’s backup. I can’t do it in that dress.”

Snow grins and says, “Just try it on, okay? I think you’ll be surprised.”

Sabrina does. And she is. The drapes are actually not connected to each other at all, and allow for almost complete freedom of movement.

And that’s how, three hours later, she ends up on an island off the coast of Marseilles, wearing the dress over a sports bra, a pair of bicycle shorts, and some practical but sparkly sandals, surrounded by fairies pretending that the High Fey court is still relevant and searching for Puck.

He’d probably be a lot easier to find if he knew she was here. And if she were a little less short.

Sabrina looks a lot healthier than she did when she was twelve. She’s filled out a little, less bones and even a tiny bit of fat on top of her corded muscles. Her eyes and her hair are bright again. Her skin has more color than just melanin. But she is still short. And she will still never hold a candle to these fairies.

They’re like the girls she avoids hanging out with at school–that little group of superficial people who not only take the time to put on a full face of makeup every morning (which, kudos to people who have time for that, Sabrina respects that kind of dedication), but comment about how terrible everyone looks without it. The ones whose every word is a barbed insult.

Only these people aren’t wearing makeup. They’re not even using magic to spark themselves up, which means Sabrina wasn’t allowed to do that either, or risk blowing her cover. They’re just… beautiful, all of them. They have skin like milk or ebony, all of it perfectly smooth (Sabrina’s acne is mostly hidden by her hair, but she still knows it’s there, and she gets the feeling these people do, too). Not a hair is out of place, and they walk in six inch heels or barefoot like air given solid form.

Sabrina is not graceful or willowy or beautiful. She’s just a normal, woefully human girl. Someone is going to catch her, call her out, and then Puck will be alone.

“Grimm?” And there it is.

Except it’s Puck.

“What are you doing here?” he asks.

“Feeling woefully inadequate,” Sabrina mutters, turning away from someone who very well could be the Navajo’s Spider Woman, who is glaring daggers at her.

Puck just raises an eyebrow.

“Uncle Jake asked Charming to be your backup, but it turns out both of them have history with Fey royalty and can’t show their faces here, so Charming volunteered me to cover you.” Sabrina says this in a rush, ending with, “And now you owe me and I hate it here and everyone’s staring at me.”

Puck’s eyebrows are still up. “You’re fine,” he says. “You look… You look fine.”

Sabrina rolls her eyes and says, “Come on, dance with me before you blow our cover.”

They dance, Puck leading. He’s still a pretty decent dancer, and Sabrina feels absolutely useless next to him. She can follow along, sort of, but everyone else in the room looks like they don’t have any bones, the way they move. Like water.

“Loosen up,” Puck hisses. “Just follow my lead. These people don’t matter.” Except, of course, for how they might kill them if they find out they’re trying to rescue the Fey queen’s latest changeling acquisition.

Sabrina tries. She’s mostly focused on getting them out of the center of the room, though, and towards the door Puck has pointed out as their goal.

“Just act like you think you’re the best, and you’ll be fine,” Puck says.

“Fake it ‘til you make it?” Sabrina asks, remembering what Puck said to her five years ago.

Puck gives her a lopsided smile and says, “Worked for me for thousands of years.”

Sabrina’s skeptical, but she tries. She doesn’t think she’s very successful.

Puck’s eyes light up, and he nods to her left. “See that guy?” Sabrina does. He’s as beautiful as everyone else in the room, and looks particularly haughty. “Ask him about the aphids in his prize garden in 1907.”

He surprises a laugh out of Sabrina, who says in a gleefully scandalized voice, “You didn’t.”

Puck grins: he definitely did.

He points out a woman with hundreds of braids so long it must have taken hours to finish them, and says, “I turned into her girlfriend and broke up with her.”

Sabrina laughs again, because she’s seen that woman be extremely cruel tonight, and Puck’s pranks are actually kind of great when they’re not directed at her.

One after another, he brings these beautiful people down, turns them into something fallible in Sabrina’s eyes, as they work their way through the sea of grace towards the door.

“They’re not better than you, Grimm,” he says with a bright, crooked smile that seems softer than usual, looking down at her. “They’re just pretty.”

“Yeah, well, pretty seems really important here,” Sabrina mutters. They’ve reached the wall, and she looks around furtively–nobody’s watching them.

Puck rolls his eyes. “You’re fine. As long as you’re not looking at everyone like they’re gonna eat you, anyway.” He opens the door for Sabrina, sliding through after her.

“They could,” Sabrina points out. “I’ve seen what your mom looks like when she’s pissed. They could all literally eat me.”

Puck rolls his eyes and doesn’t respond, leading the way to where Sabrina assumes (hopes) he’s found out the changeling is. “You’d survive. You’re good at surviving.”

She is at that.

“Behind here,” Puck says eventually, stopping at a door a few turns down the hallway.

Sabrina jiggles the handle. It’s locked, of course.

“Cover me,” she says, reaching into her bra to pull out the lock picks she brought with her. Try and make fun of her about being an over-prepared boy scout now, Daphne! And the knife strapped to her thigh has come in handy more often than she likes to think about, so there.

“What are you two doing?” a voice startles her after she’s gotten two of the tumblers into place.

“Nothing!” Puck says. His panic is probably fake, but it’s pretty believable.

Sabrina straightens, rolls her eyes, and leans heavily into Puck’s side, pressing her chest to his muscles. They’ve played this before, and she’s good at it. She doesn’t even blush anymore unless that’s how they need to run it. But tonight she’s a fairy and it’s about confidence and she is not playing the embarrassed schoolgirl caught making out with the hot guy from the track team.

“We wanted to be alone, y'know?” she says, giving the guard a look that says 'wouldn’t you?’ as she gestures to Puck’s chest, less than subtly.

The guard coughs politely, then says “You can’t go in there. That’s her majesty’s private rooms.”

“Whoops,” Puck says with a grin like a cat that caught the canary. He’s got his hand wrapped around her now, running up and down her side a little too close to her butt for comfort. Sabrina’s getting him for that later. “Know anywhere we can go then, my guy?”

Or… Sabrina runs her fingers up Puck’s chest, then down, down… How long 'til he loses his cool? She’ll get him back now.

Puck pinches her, hard. Sabrina’s hand skates back up towards the safer area of Puck’s pectorals. She hadn’t even gotten past his abs before he chickened out, the wuss. Neither of them have broken character.

The guard points down the hall, expression mildly affronted toying with amused. “Second left, third right, and any of the rooms after the first one.

Sabrina flashes her a bright grin and says "Thanks,” eyebrows waggling suggestively.

She and Puck head down the hall, making a bit of a show over groping each other until they’re around the corner.

“Shit shit shit,” Puck mutters, letting go of her as soon as they’re out of sight. “I think she saw you picking the lock.”

Sabrina rolls away, against the wall, to peek out around the corner. “I dunno, looked like she bought it.”

“Is she still–”

“In the hall,” Sabrina confirms. “We might have to make out if she heads back this way.”

Puck grins at her. “Eager, are we?”

Sabrina rolls her eyes and shoves him, watching as the guard walks away. She’s calculating speeds. If the guard didn’t test the lock, then she can finish picking it in maybe another minute. Even if she reset it, Sabrina remembers what order the first two tumblers were in. So… two minutes, max, probably. It’s a lot simpler a lock than she’d expect for a fairy queen, even one who doesn’t really have a kingdom anymore, just a bunch of people playing pretend for the sake of their egos.

Add another few minutes to get down the hall, and at the speed the guard is going…

“Wait 'til I give the signal, then get us back over there as fast as possible,” she hisses, watching the guard still.

The woman turns the corner.

Sabrina counts to thirty.

Nobody else comes into the hall. The guard doesn’t come back.

“Now,” Sabrina whispers urgently. She starts running back to the door, not checking that Puck is following. He will be. After five years, the two of them can work a mission like this with barely a word between them, they’re so synced.

* * *

They make it into the room without incident, and there, in the middle of a ridiculously opulent and anachronistically urban-chic living room, is a three-year-old-ish kid who looks absolutely miserable.

“Who’re you?” he asks.

“We’re here to rescue you,” Puck says with a grin.

The kid looks doubtful and scooches backward.

Sabrina crouches down to the kid’s level, dropping every inch of fake haughty confidence she’d been trying to put on around the Fey court. Basil hasn’t been this small in years, but she remembers how it was when he was, and she knows how scared the kid must be.

“I’m Sabrina,” she says, waving at Puck to close the door to the room and back off. “And we are here to get you out, I promise. I know Puck’s a fairy, but he’s not… like them, okay?”

The kid still looks skeptical.

“What’s your name?” Sabrina asks.

“Bee,” the kid whispers.

Sabrina grins, because that’s adorable.

“You wanna go home, right?” Sabrina asks. “See your mom and dad again?”

Bee nods.

“All right, then you gotta trust us,” Sabrina says. “Think you can do that?”

Bee doesn’t say anything.

That’s fair.

Behind Sabrina, Puck does something that makes Bee giggle. Sabrina doesn’t look. She doesn’t want to know. But Puck continues to be funny, and slowly, slowly, Bee warms up to them both.

“Okay,” Bee says eventually. “I’ll go with you.”

Puck goes in for a high five before lifting the kid onto his hip.

Sabrina has been checking the room for exits since she got in, and there appear to be absolutely zero other than the one they came in through. Unfortunate. She reaches for her knife, checking that it’s still there, and looks meaningfully at Puck. He nods, freeing a hand and reaching into his sweatshirt. Sabrina shakes her head. Puck looks at her, a question in his eyes.

“If we run into trouble,” Sabrina says, grabbing the handle of the door and preparing to open it, “You take the kid and get out of here as fast as you can.”

Because the thing is, and Sabrina’s been doing a pretty good job of bottling this up, but Sabrina is furious. It’s a good part of the reason she didn’t put up a fuss about coming to this thing without really being asked, or wearing the dress, or having to get all PDA with Puck again. The fairy queen took this kid, this helpless kid, away from a loving family, and is just… what? Keeping him? Like some kind of pet? Forever?

Not on her watch.

Because she’s been there, been that scared lonely kid that adults tossed around like property, only she was old enough to sort of protect herself, and she wasn’t completely alone, and she is not letting that happen to one more kid if she can help it. Especially one that has a perfectly good loving family at home who is terrified at the monster Jake found in their house.

So Puck is taking that kid and he is running and Sabrina will fight her way out of this if she has to.

* * *

She does, in fact, have to. It’s kind of terrible, the fight that ensues, and it’s only Sabrina making an enormous spectacle of herself that even lets Puck sneak away. The other fairies could, of course, fly as fast as he could if they noticed him. Lucky she’s been teaching him how to sneak.

At the end of it, her dress is even more in tatters than she started with, she’s got a burn down her left calf and a nasty head wound, and the only reason she’s not dead is because the fairy queen is, apparently, fascinated with her.

“You took my child,” the woman says.

“Bee was never yours,” Sabrina spits. Then she literally spits, a wad of phlegmy blood at the woman’s perfect leaf slipper thing. There’s a pair of fairies holding her, and her arms are helpless behind her back, her knife in the queen’s hands.

The queen looks kind of impressed with Sabrina’s aim. Or something. She runs a finger over Sabrina’s face, a small smile gracing her lips. Sabrina tries to jerk back, but you can only go so far when a pair of iron grips are holding your shoulders.

“You’ve got fire,” the queen says softly. “And it takes something to steal from me. You can’t get away with it, of course, but to try…”

“You can’t own a freaking person,” Sabrina repeats. Maybe if she says it enough, it’ll sink in. Even if it doesn’t, it makes her feel better, to remind herself that no matter what happens next, she did this for a good reason, spared one kid the kind of thing she went through.

Besides, her family will rescue her. Eventually.

“Perhaps… a trade?” the queen says thoughtfully. “A life for a life?”

“Oh come on,” a very memorable voice says from somewhere in the crowd that’s watching Sabrina’s fate be decided. “What do you think this is, the fifteenth century?”

Sabrina grins, because there he is. Her knight in disgusting, smelly armor.

“Excuse me?” the queen demands, rounding on the voice.

Puck works his way through the crowd, relaxed, an easy, mocking smile on his face. “We haven’t even had a kingdom to steal people away to in hundred of years, Mab. Humans run the world now. Stop living in some fantasy golden age and get with the times!”

The other fairies look furious. Her idiot is gonna get himself killed one of these days, Sabrina’s sure of it.

Not today, though, apparently, because they’re not doing anything except glaring at him.

“So I’m gonna take my girlfriend–”

Sabrina’s brain stalls out. Because she and Puck, they kiss, yeah, and there’s definitely a thing going on, and they text all the time, but neither of them have ever put a name on this. They don’t talk about their feelings. They make fun of each other. But he just– he said– and–

She thinks she likes it.

“and we’re gonna skadoodle,” Puck says. “And if you ever take another kid, we’re gonna make you regret it.” Puck grins, bright and proud and wicked, and nudges Sabrina in the side. “You should see her fight when she hasn’t been surprised into it.”

Sabrina is still focused on getting herself past the “g” word. A word she definitely likes, by the way. She doesn’t realize the grin that’s lit up her own face. It’s a little manic. Adrenaline and all.

Mab glares at Puck but says nothing.

Puck looks pointedly at the people holding Sabrina’s shoulders. They hesitate, do something she can’t see, and then let go.

“I’m keeping this,” Mab says, holding up Sabrina’s knife. “As a… reminder.”

Sabrina shrugs. Not like she doesn’t have a dozen more weapons stashed around. Although the way Mab looks at her, and the way she says reminder, are both a little creepy.

* * *

“That was easy,” Sabrina says, surprised, as she and Puck saunter through the front doors. “Why didn’t we just have you confront her from the start?”

Puck shakes his head. “Mab knows how willing I’d be to fight her over some random kid. Over you, though…”

Sabrina grins at him, butting him in the shoulder. “Why? 'Cause I’m your girlfriend?”

Puck flushes a little. “That… And. I mean, she could see… like… you don’t get it, Grimm.”

“Get what?”

Puck glares at her, brighter red now. “Are you really gonna make me say it?”

Sabrina grins. She loves it when she gets to make Puck uncomfortable for a change. “Yes.”

Puck sighs. “It’s… Like, you were talking about how you felt inadequate, right? Earlier? Well, you’re… not. Like, entirely not. Fairies… we’re… I mean, I’m not, obviously, but most of us, we’re kinda… humans feel a lot more… alive, than we do, I guess. Vibrant? Yeah, that sounds right. And you, you’re just… extra.”

Well. Now Puck isn’t the only one that’s uncomfortable.

“When you were laughing in there,” Puck continues, “everyone was staring, yeah, but not 'cause you’re not graceful enough or whatever you think. 'Cause we mostly don’t look like that. 'Cause Everafters live ages, but we lived somewhere else, before we came here, and nothing changed there. It’s… I don’t know how to describe it, but it’s hard to really feel alive, there. And you–” He gestures wildly to Sabrina, looking overwhelmed and exasperated.

“Me?” Sabrina asks, a little amused now, a little intrigued. Puck doesn’t talk about how old he is, much. Sabrina likes to hear about it.

“You don’t know how here you are,” Puck says. “It’s overwhelming. And Mab… she wanted that for herself, yeah, but… I wasn’t really trying to hide how much it does for me, for once.”

“Yeah?” Sabrina asks, shy suddenly. Because girlfriend is one thing, and that’s great, but she can tease him about that. This is infinitely personal and out of character for Puck to share.

“If she’d tried to keep you,” Puck says, “If she’d tried to lock you up in her little pretend court like some kind of personal artwork…” He’s glaring now, fists clenched at his sides.

“I’d have gotten out,” Sabrina says with a half-smile. “I’ve been told I’m pretty resourceful.” One time she broke out of a crate on a truck bound for Mexico with nothing but a paper clip and some determination, but now isn’t really the time to brag about that.

“I know,” Puck says. “But maybe not before she screwed with you.”

There’s history here, and Sabrina’s dying to ask about it. About how he knows so severely that the queen is a monster. But now’s not the time. It must be pretty big, though. It takes a lot to get Puck to open up about emotional things.

She just bumps her shoulder into his again and says, “Hey. I’m fine.”

Puck smiles at her a little, and things between them are soft and vulnerable and terrifying but elating at the same time, the way they are when either of them lets their walls down for a little while. And Sabrina likes it, but Puck still looks wounded, somehow.

So she says, “So, since you’re so in love with my vibrancy and all, you’re gonna take the fall when Daphne asks why she didn’t get included in this, right?”

Puck laughs. “Not a chance, you asshole.” But he holds out a hand to fly her off the island, and she’s pretty sure she can talk him into it.


End file.
